The Silicon City exhibit and our tour of Civic Hall presented a very different outlook on the rise of tech in city than the one we have been presented in our readings.
Though Silicon City felt more like a presentation on the history of tech rather than one focused on tech in New York, it still touched upon the increasing number of tech companies basing themselves in New York as well as the prospects of more tech-focused education, as shown in the building of Cornell Tech. The theme of Silicon City is a future where most people will be employed in some form of tech.
The Civic Hall tour gave a much deeper perspective in effect of tech on the city. Though the presentation was mainly focused on the firm’s effect on the federal government’s tech policies, the underlying theme was that tech is always presenting new opportunities. The firm based in Civic Hall was basically created to address the inefficiencies of government tech. These inefficiencies are partially the result of poorly-run bureaucracy, but it’s also due to the continuous advancement of technology. Tech that was sufficient for certain responsibilities in the past have to be replaced to address the needs of today and the future. The firm works to recognize these inefficiencies and present solutions whenever possible. In a way, the message of Civic Hall is that tech is always changing and there’s always new problems. As a result, that means that there’s always new opportunities.
The Civic Hall tour reaffirmed my beliefs in tech’s true place in the future global economy. Though it is true that, in terms of employees per firm, tech does hire significantly less people than industries like manufacturing, the idea that that will lead to an overall decline in job opportunities is not proven. In my view, with the rise in problems related to tech, the rise in total number of firms may make up for the loss in employees per firm. Throughout tech’s short history, it always seemed that whenever one problem is fixed, ten more rise out of it. It’s like the rise of new programming languages. The language of C++ was created to address the inefficiencies of its predecessor C. While many new opportunities arose because of it, along came new problems that were simply unforeseen in C. Thus, it is unreasonable to believe that we may one day become so efficient in our tech that we may never need to maintain and upgrade it. Tech as we know it will be very different ten, or even five, years from now. There will be new problems and more problems than ever before. Tech has to be there, ever vigilant, to address them.
The rejected zoning changes in Williamsburg, however, brings me back to what I feel is the biggest issue with the rise of tech. It’s not the lack of job opportunities, though that issue is very real in the short term. It’s the prospect of gentrification and the drastic changing of environment that tech brings. Tech’s prosperity is rooted in its tendency to center itself in few locations. That means that it’s almost impossible for tech to prosper in areas without crowding lower-income people out. This issue is not just short-term, it’s long-term. Unless tech suddenly begins offering more lower-skilled positions, perhaps by dividing responsibilities that higher-skilled positions have, tech will always be a profession with a high skill floor and, as a result, a high income. In order to address this issue, we do need to hold off on completely entrenching areas in tech, perhaps only letting a few at a time. We need to make sure that when do let some in that it does not set precedents for other companies to come in at will, which is a primary issue of the proposed zoning changes. In the mean time, we must focus on educating our current and our future workers in tech so that when the time comes when we absolutely need to begin our full shift, that they will be ready to seize the opportunities as they come.
Christian, these are very insightful reflections on the field trip and article about the tech hub proposed for Williamsburg. You are right: civic tech exists to “correct” inefficiencies of technology by itself and also the combination of technology and bureaucracy, which is the basis of much of modern life. It’s almost as if civic tech wants to replace government as we know it with–with what? Instantaneous, crowd-sourced decision making??? I’m not trying to make a job, I’m trying to envision what civic tech may be used for.
About the creation of lower-paid, lower-skilled tech jobs: yes. Most new jobs are service jobs, which include selling things, working in a warehouse, and cleaning buildings. Sometimes I wonder if coding will be the factory work of the future….